


the chaos moves by itself

by bluebacchus



Series: Halloween Terrorfest 2019 [4]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Blasphemy, Blow Jobs, Cannibalism, Catholicism, Catholicism AND cannibalism, Come Eating, Hand Jobs, Heresy, Hodgson speaking French to flex on Hickey, I can't warn you enough that this is NASTAYYY, M/M, Madness, autocannibalism, lots of eating inappropriate things, many references to the work of carlo ginzburg, transubstantiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 03:02:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21172337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus
Summary: Hodgson's mind cracks and the heavens flow in.(Written for Day 7 of Halloween TerrorFest: A disquieting metamorphosis and posted separately because I don't want to taint my main post with borderline vore)





	the chaos moves by itself

**Author's Note:**

> BIG CW FOR SELF-CANNIBALISM (MINORLY) AND EATING SOMEONE WHO IS NOT YET DEAD (MAJORLY)
> 
> BIGGER CW FOR DRAWING SO HEAVILY ON GINZBURG'S THE CHEESE AND THE WORMS FOR HODGSON'S WARPED VIEW OF CATHOLICISM

The Catholic service plays in his mind over and over again. Each time he reaches for the fork, fine china plate perched on his lap, he pretends he is a holy man and blesses the food in front of him. His lips move silently, unnoticed by the rest of Hickey’s camp, as he transforms the flesh in front of him into the body of Christ.

Only then does he eat.

He eats ravenously, indulging in the bloody cut of thigh in front of him until blood trickles into his blond whiskers. He returns for seconds, and then for thirds, sucking the blessed meat off its bones and moaning wantonly as his empty stomach is filled for the first time in months. The other men watch in disgusted horror; he pays them no mind.

They are eating man; he is filling himself with the Son of God.

* * *

Hickey comes to him that night.

He sleeps alone to “maintain a sense of decorum”, or so Hickey claims. It is punishment for his privilege, to sleep apart from the warmth of the others, but Hickey comes to him anyways. He slides into Hodgson’s sleeping bag behind him, trailing a surprisingly warm hand under his slops and up his side.

“Some believe in one way, some in another,” Hickey whispers, and then in silence, he reaches around and grasps Hodgson’s cock in his fist and rubs himself against the thickness of his thigh while he jerks him off.

When Hodgson spills over Hickey’s hand, he withdraws, pulling the sleeping bag back so he can straddle Hodgson’s waist, soiled hand held aloft like it is about to offer a blessing.

“If I blessed this, would you eat it too?” Hickey says. It is too dark to see his smirk, but Hodgson can hear it.

The cold and the dark and the isolation twist together and he is suddenly back with his aunts at Catholic mass, taking communion. He has eaten the bread, and now he is offered the wine.

“Yes,” he says to the priest in his mind, and Hickey offers him a cupped hand. Expecting wine, it’s a shock when his tongue finds something salty instead of sweet, but it is sacred so he drinks it anyways.

When Hickey pulls his hand away and wipes it on the blankets below him, he says, “You’re a filthy man, Mr. Hodgson.”

And Hodgson says, “Who was Christ but a man like you or I?”

* * *

Neither of them speak of that night. It appears and disappears in Hodgson’s mind like a distant dream, one he can perceive in between flashes of other memories but slips from his grasp when he tries to hold on.

The butchering of human flesh is not new to their camp, not anymore, yet Hodgson is still the only one who eats with relish. Hickey watches him during meals; Hodgson feels like he is standing behind the altar, preparing to recite the homily. He is apart from the men, not because he is an officer, but because they are sinners and he is the one who will absolve them.

Hickey watches him often, he finds, not just at meals. It is not a surprise when Hickey comes to him again.

“Please,” Hodgson says, gesturing at a corner of sleeping bag, “sit down.”

Hickey sits, legs stretched out in front of him. His booted feet land in Hodgson’s lap.

“I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Hickey.”

“Expecting? Or hoping?”

Hodgson smiles in a manner that rivals Hickey’s.

“I see you watching me, Mr. Hickey. What are you hoping for? Absolution?”

“Your survival instinct interests me, Mr. Hodgson. That is all.”

“_Honni soi qui mal y pense,” _he responds.

Hickey scowls at the foreign tongue, a divide between them.

“Flesh is so much simpler than the soul, wouldn’t you say?” Hickey says. “One who is good to eat is sinless, one who is bad is sinful. Which one, I wonder, will you be, Mr. Hodgson?”

* * *

The comment stays with him. It did not register as a threat at the time, nor does he consider it one now. Rather, Hodgson wonders the same. Idly, he lays back in his tent and removes a glove. He brings his hand to his mouth, wondering if he would be able to taste his soul if he were to bite into the meat of his hand.

His teeth clamp down.

It tastes divine.

* * *

Goodsir wraps his mutilated hand in the last strips of sailcloth.

“Does it hurt, Lieutenant Hodgson?” he asks.

“Are any of us without pain here?”

Goodsir lets out a sound that may be a cough or a sob and lets his fingers trail over Hodgson’s.

“I once read a book,” Hodgson starts dreamily, “about an island, isolated from the rest of mankind, who kill those who are sick when their God commands it. The father holds a cloth over the mouth of the son, or the son over the mouth of the father, or the husband over the mouth of the wife, or the wife over the mouth of the husband. Then, with great celebration and great solemnity, they slice up the body and invite their friends and relatives, and they eat from him.”

Goodsir looks at him with great sadness.

“We’re all sick.”

“Yes,” Hodgson says.

When he leaves the tent, he takes the bottle of liquid laudanum with him.

* * *

Hickey comes to him that night, sliding into his sleeping bag like he did the first time.

“How did it taste, Mr. Hodgson?”

Hodgson turns so he is nose to nose with the other man.

“Like heaven,” he says slowly, and Hickey shivers. “Would you like to taste?”

Hickey nods, and though Hodgson has his bandaged hand extended, Hickey crawls down the length of his body and unfastens his trousers with quick, deft hands and takes his flaccid length into his mouth.

Under the experienced ministrations of Hickey’s tongue, Hodgson does not take long to harden.

“How does it taste, Mr. Hickey?” he asks between staccato gasps.

Hickey does not respond, just takes more of Hodgson’s length into his mouth until he is choking around it. His eyes are sparkling with moisture in the endless Arctic summer, but he does not slow. He does not stop. And it is now that Hodgson realizes that Hickey will never stop, not until every one of them are dead and consumed, him a witness to it all.

When he comes, painting Hickey’s face with his blessed fluids, he turns to his side and offers Hickey the bottle he stole from Goodsir’s medical kit.

Hickey does not look at the label. He is a young God, a self-made Divine Entity in the Arctic, and he does not know how to turn his water into wine, or his opiate tincture into water.

* * *

“And when they consumed him,” Hodgson says, depositing Hickey’s naked body on the table, “they take his bones and bury them.”

He begins at the legs, taking slices from his calves and thighs and stuffing them greedily into his mouth.

“They make great celebration and melody,” he continues, as Manson begins to sing a slow, sorrowful tune. He shares the flesh he peels from the other man with the others; Des Voeux, Tozer, and Pilkington stand behind him like altar boys, watching him perform his rites.

“All their friends and relatives who did not attend this celebration are no longer considered friends,” he says, raising his voice so that Goodsir can hear. He emerges from his tent, scalpel in hand.

“For God’s sake, Lieutenant Hodgson,” he says, approaching with the scalpel, “put him out of his misery.”

Goodsir approaches the immobile man on the table, limbs splayed and stripped and bitten, and caresses his cheek in conflicted fondness before slitting the man’s throat.

As the blood pours from Hickey’s veins, Hodgson takes his hand in his. “The friends say that they eat his flesh to free him from suffering; and when the flesh is fat, they say that it is well and that they have sent him to paradise quickly.” He raises Hickey’s hand to his face, and bites into his wrist.

**Author's Note:**

> Big shout out to Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg who never intended his work to be used in this manner!
> 
> Sorry Carlo


End file.
